El Goonish Shive character statistics

Ever wanted to know which character appeared the most often if the webcomic El Goonish Shive? Whether
Tedd or Elliot appears most often in a sketchbook comic? How much time Ellen spends in her V5 form? Then you've come to the
right place! This page lets you know how often each character appeared in what forms in the story, EGS:NP and sketchbook sections.
And that's not all: we've also got a handy comic list that you can filter by character and form, and links to Shiveapedia for
some of the characters.

What constitutes an appearance?

I consider a character to have appeared in a comic if he or she (or both) is at least partially visible in one of the panels,
or has off-screen dialogue. Appearances in fantasy sequences or thought-bubbles are also counted, as well as silhouetted appearances
(if I know for certain who the obscured character was). Minor and one-shot characters are included pretty much on my whim.

A form is considered canon only if it was used in the main story comics (or an explicitly canon EGS:NP story), and not in
a fantasy sequence or thought-bubble. A character can appear in multiple forms in a single comic, so the form appearance counts
may add up to more than the character's appearance count.

If you notice a mistake, please let me know by leaving a comment on my blog.

How often are the statistics updated?

The statistics for story (and, when applicable, EGS:NP) comics are updated at the end of each storyline. At least,
that's the idea. In practice, I tend to fall behind regularly. Feel free to kick me in the arse (but not too hard) if that happens.

1. Grace
(aka. Shade Tail)

Grace is a shape shifter, one of several created in an attempt to manufacture the perfect assassin. One of her donors was intended to be a naturally strong male, but Dr. Sciuridae, after his daughter Grace Sciuridae died, replaced his DNA with that of the original Grace, resulting in the Grace we know and love.

Grace lives at Tedd's house and is in a relationship with him, but goes to school at Moperville South. She has several "brothers" from Project Lycanthrope: Hedge, Guineas, and Vlad. She considers Dr. Sciuridae her father, and Mr. Guyur her grandfather.

2. Elliot
(Elliot Daniel Dunkel)

Elliot appeared in the first ever El Goonish Shive comic, and might be called EGS's main character. However, he is in a fierce battle for the top spot in story comic appearances with Grace.

Elliot is Tedd's best friend, and attends school at Moperville North with him. He trains Anime Style Martial Arts with Justin under Sensei Greg, and has a movie review show on the Internet together with Susan.

Elliot was originally Nanase's boyfriend, but she broke up with him so he could pursue Sarah after the latter said she loved him (Nanase then hooked up with Ellen, Elliot's female duplicate). However, he since broke up with Sarah and is now attracted to Susan (which may be mutual). Simultaneously, Diane is plotting to make him hers as part of a revenge plot, and Justin also has a long-time crush on him. Hold on, let me draw a chart...

3. Tedd
(Tedd Drew Verres)

Everybody's favourite pervert (yes, even Susan's) is another character that has been present right from the beginning. He met Elliot on the playground when the latter defended him against some bullies.

Interactions with his friends and his girlfriend Grace, as well as recent events, have caused him to gain a great deal more self-confidence. He even stopped wearing his glasses all the time.

4. Sarah
(Sarah Brown)

Sarah has been around since the early days of El Goonish Shive, but has sadly been granted less screentime than other first-timers Elliot and Tedd. This is probably because Sarah is arguably the most normal of all the EGS characters, earning her the (somewhat undeserved) nickname "Unremarkable Girl" among bunnies. She is a good friend of Susan, and until recently was dating Elliot.

5. Nanase
(Nanase Kitsune)

Nanase is Tedd's cousin, and Elliot's former girlfriend. She takes martial arts classes together with Elliot and Justin, and met Susan in Paris where they learned magic, including the skill of using hammers. Nanase is Japanese.

Nanase has a very strict mother, and her father never steps in to help her. Fortunately, her sister Akiko is on her side. She attends school at Moperville South.

Since she is Japanese, her name should actually be written in kanji. My sources suggest this would be 狐七瀬 "Kitsune Nanase" (Japanese write names with the surname before the given name). Kitsune means "fox", and Nanase (when written with those characters) means "seven rapids" (rapids as in a river).

6. Ellen
(Ellen Danielle Dunkel)

Ellen is Elliot's female duplicate, created by the dewitchery diamond. Although Ellen originally started out as a real duplicate of Elliot, Nioi made Ellen experience a "second life" in an alternate dimension (together with Nioi's own duplicate, Kaoli) in an effort to age her soul to match her body. As a result, Ellen's personality is now quite distinct from Elliot.

Ellen is in a relationship with Nanase, and goes to school at Moperville South.

7. Susan
(Tiffany Susan Pompoms)

The ever-cynical Susan was raised with a strong distrust of men because her father cheated on her mother leading to a divorce. Because she witnessed her father with another woman and was in fact the one who told her mother about it, she also has some repressed feelings of guilt about the whole thing.

Susan goes to school at Moperville North, where she is a good friend of Sarah, and met Nanase in France, where the two of them learned magic.

8. Justin
(Justin Tolkiberry)

Justin is a friend of Elliot, with whom he attends Sensei Greg's Anime Style Martial Arts dojo. Justin attends Moperville South with Nanase, Ellen and Grace, and works at Salty Crackers Comics, a store owned by his uncle.

Justin used to date Melissa, but broke up with her when he discovered he was gay. She unfortunately still thinks it's a phase, and was also responsible for outing Justin.

9. Dan
(Dan Shive)

As the author of the comic, Dan occasionally appears in filler or sketchbook comics to answer questions or inform the reader of delays (or just to engage in wacky hijinks). He also seems to be a character in a comic written by Sarah, thus creating an endless loop between fictional universes that wound up destroying the multiverse (or maybe not).

14. Noah

Noah is a student at Moperville South and apparently the protégé of Mr. Raven. He is dating Melissa, and he occasionally takes on a superhero disguise to fight dragons and such; normal, everyday high school student stuff.

His first appearance was in during the "not a date at the mall" storyline in EGS:NP, and he made his intro in the main story comics a few months later as "The Child Left Behind", aka. the mysterious cloaked figure, although we didn't get confirmation that was him until years later.

16. Sensei Greg

Legend has it that after his girlfriend dumped him, Greg watched anime for 168 hours straight. Already a black belt in three disciplines, he was able to decipher the key to accessing the awesome power of a person's "ki", which usually involves participating in difficult, overly complex and fairly ridiculous activities that shouldn't yield such fantastic results and yet somehow do. Greg founded the Anime-style Martial Arts Dojo based on those principles.

18. Jeremy

Jeremy is a cat with hedgehog spines: a creature nature never intended. He lives with Tedd. Jeremy likes catnip and is fond of Susan, and if Grace's Jeremy form is any indication, should be pretty powerful himself.

19. Hedge

Hedge is one of Grace's "brothers", one of the lycanthropes created in an attempt to create a perfect assasin. He is a shapeshifter whose form is based on a hedgehog. He was created from an Uryuom egg using 25% hedgehog and 75% human DNA, resulting in a "roaisol seyunolu", or lesser chimera.

20. Mr. Tensaided

Mr. Tensaided is the owner of the video rental store where Susan works. He is a big fan of table-top RPG's, and as such makes his employees solve "riddles" before giving them their paychecks, and also has a leveling system for clerks.

23. Rhoda

Rhoda is one of the members of Diane's gang at Moperville South, although one does get the impression that she doesn't really belong there. Certainly Lucy was looking at her quite condescendingly, but Diane has shown she cares about Rhoda.

Rhoda had several background and filler appearances as the previously unidentified "shy girl".

28. Vlad
(Vladia)

Vlad is one of Grace's "brothers", one of the lycanthropes created in an attempt to create the perfect assasin. He is the most complex shapeshifter created; although he can vaguely be described as a bat, his DNA sources included several bats, owls, hawks and even leopard DNA, in addition to human and Uryuom, which means Vlad is a "tulougol seyunolu", or "greater chimera", like Grace.

Because of the risk involved in transforming, he has chosen to remain human after being transformed into a human girl by Ellen's V5 beam, and currently goes by the name Vladia. He is in a government institution with Hedge and Guineas, being evaluated for fitness to return to society.

29. Damien

Damien was a megalomaniac capable of controlling fire. He was created by a group of people trying to fulfill a prophecy, but he believed himself to be a god. He planned to use Grace to breed additional shapeshifters similar to Grace, Hedge, Guineas and Vlad, the four of whom he held captive.

In the end, Damien would rather destroy himself (in the hopes of taking Grace with him) than accept the truth that he might not be what he thought he was.

30. Guineas

Guineas is one of Grace's "brothers", one of the lycanthropes created in an attempt to create the perfect assassin, and former captive/henchman of Damien. He is a shapeshifter based on 50% human and 50% guinea pig DNA, which means he is "roaisol seyunolu", or lesser chimera.

31. Melissa

Melissa first appeared annoying the heck out of Justin because as his ex-girlfriend she was convinced being gay was "just a phase" for him. By telling her sister about Justin, she's responsible for the news about his sexual orientation coming out, which Justin has never forgiven her for.

33. Goo

Originally thought to have been one of Tedd's chemistry projects brought to life, the Goo turned out to be a demon nucleus send by Lord Tedd to kill the Tedd of this dimension. Beta Tedd warned Grace of this fact, as well as alerting the crew to the existence of Lord Tedd.

35. Demonic Duck

Whenever people need a distraction, the Demonic Duck is around to help! Except when he is on strike, of course. Besides being used for distractions in the story, Dan has also used the duck to distract his readers when he was lagging behind with the updates.

44. Magus

Magus, also known as the Mastermind, is a mysterious shadowy figure from an unknown other dimension who is determined to be reborn, and somehow having Ellen transform Elliot in a wave of emotion is crucial to this plan. Unfortunately Helena and Demetrius keep getting in the way.

47. Nioi

One of the underlings of Lord Tedd, Nioi came to our universe during Painted Black to find out if Dr. Sciuridae was alive here. In the process, she gave Ellen the infamous "nose-beep" which provided her with a past for her newly-born soul so that its age would match that of her body, in the form of a "second life" that Ellen shared with Kaoli, Nioi's duplicate.

Random note: her name means "scent" in Japanese, which is written as 匂い.

50. Dr. Sciuridae

Father of the original Grace, Dr. Sciuridae was so distraught after she died that he added her DNA to the mix when the shady organization he was working for was creating their fourth lycanthrope, which resulted in the creation of the Grace we all know and love.